AppleScript initially supported the idea of multiple dialects: different syntactic representations of the same script. The standard dialect was English; French, and Japanese dialects were also produced. (A C dialect was publicly discussed, but never shipped.) A dialect could redefine the keywords and even the grammar of the language, so that, for instance, commands in the Japanese dialect had the verb at the end.
Because AppleScript stores scripts in a compiled form, it could compile a script in one dialect and decompile it in another. While the project was a technical success, few application developers provided terminology in multiple languages, which meant that scripts were a confusing mix of languages in most cases. Support for multiple dialects was dropped by Apple in Mac OS 8.5.